1. A world-wide system of discussion groups, with comments passed among hundreds of thousands of machines. Not all USENET machines are on the Internet. USENET is completely decentralized, with over 10,000 discussion areas, called newsgroups. From Matisse

2. Point: The protocol for transporting USENET messages is called NNTP: "Network News Transport Protocol". Key point: The USENET Death Penalty (http://www.stopspam.org/usenet/faqs/udp.html) is often applied to NNTP servers in order to stop the flood of spam. It is often applied to ISPs who allow users to send lots of spam or allow their servers to be hijacked. For this reasons, many ISPs (especially high-speed cable modem and DSL providers will scan their customers looking for unauthorized NNTP servers. Controversy: USENET presents a philosophical challenge to the Internet because of its distributed nature. It allows anonymous publishing of material that cannot be traced back to the source. This challenges the historic concepts of intellectual property and how it can be protected. For example, when RC2 and RC4 were posted to USENET, they stopped being trade-secrets. From Hacking-Lexicon

3. USEr NETwork: a public access network on the Internet that provides user news. There are a number of newsgroups dedicated to Linux issues including the moderated comp.os.linux.announce for Linux announcements. From Linux Guide @FirstLinux

4. The leading distributed bulletin board, widely available on UNIX-based computer systems, and linked through the Internet and other computer networks. Offering more than 1,500 newsgroups, UseNet is accessed daily by more than 15 million people in more than 100 countries. Within UseNet is a discussion group (newsgroup) on every conceivable topic and some you haven't thought of. Each newsgroup focuses on a particular subject, such as sports cars, firearms, U.S. history, model aircraft, politics, or jazz. Well-represented subjects are hobbies, politics, scientific disciplines, and topics of current public debate. UseNet users can read and reply to posted messages. From QUECID

5. Usenet is derived from "User's Network" and was originally a separate service, or what is called a Bulletin Board System. It is very developed but is seldom called Usenet now -- more commonly referred to as newsgroups, discussion groups, or sometimes just News. There are no restrictions on joining a newsgroup. While not all Usenet machines are on the Internet, this is rapidly changing. There are over 10,000 newsgroups. URL's for newsgroups differ in appearance, with no domain name appearing -- eg., news:comp.jobs.offered From Faculty-of-Education